Microsoft's 'Starfield' Ditches Voiced Protagonist Despite Chatty NPCs

Microsoft Corporation's MSFT upcoming game, "Starfield," features a vast open world with more than 1,000 planets and plenty of characters to interact with.

While the non-player characters (NPCs) have voices, the player character in "Starfield" remains silent. This decision was made to enhance the game's expansive scale, "Starfield" lead designer Emil Pagliarulo said in an interview with Polygon.

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According to Pagliarulo, initially, the game had a voiced protagonist, but this idea was abandoned as it limited player customization and the voice felt too specific.

"But [in Starfield] you can make every different type of person. We realized that the only way to really do it and let the player be the person they want to be was to have an unvoiced protagonist," the designer revealed.

Moreover, Pagliarulo disclosed that the choice to have a silent protagonist was partly influenced by fan feedback on "Fallout 4," a previous Bethesda game with a talkative main character. Although "Fallout 4's" reception didn't directly lead to "Starfield's" silent protagonist, it "certainly played into it."

"We have over 200,000 lines of spoken dialogue in Starfield with no voiced protagonists. And it was not having a voiced protagonist that allowed us to create such a big world," the designer concluded.

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Image courtesy: Xbox.com